One of the country’s most distinguished leaders in developing novel public health strategies, Dr. Anne Zink, MD, has joined the Yale School of Public Health as a Lecturer and Senior Fellow in the Department of Health Policy and Management.
Dr. Zink, who began her position on December 1, is nationally recognized for implementing data-driven health care solutions and advocating for health improvements at local, tribal, territorial, state, and national levels.
From 2018 to 2024, Dr. Zink served as the Chief Medical Officer for the State of Alaska, where she is known for leading the state’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic and achieving exceptional vaccination rates and one of the country’s lowest death rates through effective coordination with 229 tribes, public health, and municipal leaders. In her role as CMO, she also pioneered the “Healthy Alaskans” initiative in collaboration with the Governor’s Office, started the state’s Complex Care Committee to streamline government agencies to better serve patients, and developed new initiatives on pressing health issues ranging from tuberculosis to youth mental health.
Dr. Zink is also the immediate past-president of the Association of State and Territorial Health Officials, where she represented public health leaders from all 50 states and U.S. territories, fostering collaboration and advocating for policy changes at a moment of quick transformation in the field of public health.
A throughline in her work is her special emphasis on enhancing the integration of public health and health care data across the country. She currently holds leadership roles in numerous foundations (including serving on the steering committee for the Common Health Coalition and the Biosecurity Game Changer coalition), and has served in both formal and informal advisory roles to state, private, and national health data initiatives (including as a member of the advisory committee to the Director of the CDC on Data Informatics and as board member for the Alaska Health Information Exchange).
Dr. Zink has been the recipient of numerous awards, ranging from a Special Award from the Federation of Natives, to the National Policy Pioneer Award from the American College of Emergency Physicians, to an honorary doctorate from the University of Alaska Anchorage. She also is a highly-regarded health communicator, regularly contributing to a monthly Alaskan health radio show and podcast, and having been featured in thousands of print, online, cable, and broadcast news stories. She also continues to serve on the front lines of emergency medicine, applying her hands-on experience as a practicing emergency physician to her policy and programmatic work.
Dr. Zink holds a BA from Bryn Mawr and an MD from Stanford. She completed her residency in emergency medicine at University of Utah, served as a Thomas J. Watson Fellow in four continents, and was a long-time instructor for the National Outdoor Leadership School.
"As a Senior Fellow at YSPH, Dr. Zink will be deeply engaged in teaching, mentorship, and collaboration on health data initiatives and health communication across our school.," Dean Megan L. Ranney, MD, said. "We are truly honored for her to bring her deep knowledge - in public health leadership, in crisis communication, in rural and indigenous American public health, in public health data - to our school. We are excited to have her expertise and leadership as part of our academic programs and look forward to her contributions in shaping the future of public health education and practice."